Dumash Adventures: Ho Ho Ho!

What a busy holiday season! Between hosting and attending potlucks and housing guests, our schedule has been loaded!

A big house means lots of decorating! Fortunately, we know someone with a flare for this sort of thing... Mommé came to help us decorate our tree. And the price was right! ;) Thanks a million!

Quite a few presents under there already!

Jeff's brother, Scott, arrived from Calgary on December 20th. He has friends in Penticton and a new snowboard, so he has been spending his time back and forth between the two places. Unfortunately, he had a minor snowboarding injury to his tailbone (who knew that branch would be sticking out when he went over that log???), so he has been welcoming ice packs and Robaxacet.

Shi arrived on Christmas Eve after a fairly treacherous drive through the snowy mountains. We had a lovely dinner at Dad's, along with Kathy's kids. After dinner, the pool tournament began. We enjoyed Scott putting pressure on his brother/teammate and Jeff's slipper-flipping-jig-of-success! Dad and Shi stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to determine the ultimate champion. (Dad took the title again this year!)

We headed back up to Dad's first thing in the morning to open gifts. Scott was pleased to receive the goggles he had asked for (modeled here by Jeff):

As Scott made himself comfortable in Dad's chair, he decided to reveal his latest manly act.

Here's the close-up:

Yes, that is a snowman on his big toe. "It takes a real man to get that done." How ever you want to justify it, buddy!

Dad and Shi pause in gratitude for all the wonderful gifts. Thanks everybody!

We packed up our goodies before heading over to Mom's for Round Two. Her tree looked so lovely and we were all eager to see what Santa had brought!

We watched excitedly as Mom opened the gift Shi bought her with her winnings in Vegas.

Shi got one for me and for herself. For some odd reason, Mom seems to think hers is better!

Jeff was delighted to open this mini Frankenstein from the gift exchange we do on his side of the family. (Thanks, Uncle Gavin!) You may recognize this Van Halen replica (though smaller here) from our video shoot during the Long Way Across this summer.(http://dumash.blogspot.com/2009/07/thunder-creek-road-somewhere-in.html)

Shi and Mom enjoy the scrapbook pages from the albums we made with our new electronic scrapbooking software, Creative Memories.

Thanks to Kristine for inviting us to the workshop! To all you scrapbookers out there, this program is awesome! We haven't spent too much time with it, but given our schedule, it sure beats measuring, cutting and gluing! I much prefer to drag and drop! There are some pre-made pages, but you can customize as much as you like! Here are a couple of examples of the pages we made:

After opening what seemed like neverending gifts, Jeff went to pick up Grandma and Grandpa while we got brunch ready. Delicious!

After polishing off his plate, Grandpa was ready to get at their gifts!

Grandma looks great in the pashmina Shi picked up for her in Vegas.

We took our afternoon break back at our house. Here's Scott lounging uncomfortably on the couch as we opened gifts from him.

Doesn't Sporty Spice look smashing in his matching t-shirt and jacket ensemble?

Here are the two Dumass Elves in front of our tree. The hats are a tribute to you, Flo! And Jeff got his hippopotamus, not a crocodile, for Christmas. "... only a hippopotamus will do..."

As I was nursing a cold, I stayed home while Jeff, Shi, Mom, Grandma and Grandpa headed to Uncle Steve's. I had a good nap and was ready for yet another delicious meal, back at Mom's. What a day!

Jeff and I decided to host a gathering for family and friends on December 28th. Great food, great company and great leftovers! I told Auntie Leigh she has to convince Jeff to buy a house this big so we can have gatherings like this all the time!